Tricycle Blog

This will make Scientologists happy: Prozac and Paxil may not work as well as we're led to believe.
Scientists are now saying we're "some momentary fluctuation in a field of matter and energy out in space... Your memories and the world you think you see around you are illusions." Is this a problem?
And is cloned beef, or lab-grown beef, that bad, given that much of the world continues to eat cows?
More »

For northern city-dwellers, the grey months of January and February can feel like a kind of apocalyptic-aftermath, but duller: dirty slush on the subway steps and reality television. When seasonal melancholy threatens, it’s best to turn to poetry, which makes ennui seem more bearable—or, at the very least, more important. The most premium of all poetic medicines may be the haiku, being formally required to address time and loss, as well as beautiful enough to make up for the indignity of damp socks.
Turning the pages of Haiku Master Buson, you feel can feel your commonplace Seasonal Affective Disorder being transformed into something unique and delicate, more along the lines of
With the soundlessness of winter rain
on mosses, vanished days
are remembered
More »

An interesting business article by Tarun Khanna considers the increasing connections between China and India (two huge and growing economies that are not yet great trading partners) and how Buddhism is part of their "common language".
Does anybody remember eating at HoJo's? The world has taken a few spins since those days and they're almost all gone. There was one in Times Square here in New York until very recently. Well, if you're in Houston, stop by the former Howard Johnson's that's going Zen thanks to the Texas Bodhi Society. Now it's a vegetarian restaurant with free books and meditation CDs, and a Zen garden coming soon.
More »

More violence in southern Thailand, this time a Baghdad-style bomb in a crowded market.
British groups have called for tourists to boycott Burma.
India is big on family planning, and with good reason, but Buddhists in Ladakh, also known as Little Tibet, worry that if they follow this policy, they will die out.
A controversial facelift for Bodh Gaya, Buddhism's holiest town, is in the works.
There have been investment indices for Christians and Muslims for some time.
More »

The F.D.A. says milk and meat from cloned animals is safe to eat:
Tuesday’s decision means cloning technology could move into commercial use a mere decade after the world learned of the existence of Dolly the sheep, the first mammal cloned from an adult cell, in Scotland. To create Dolly, scientists took an unfertilized sheep egg and removed the genetic material. They then inserted the genetic material from an adult cell. Machinery within the egg somehow reset the clock on the adult genes, and the new cell, after implantation into a surrogate mother sheep, developed into Dolly.
This technique has since become routine in laboratories, with clones produced in numerous species — not including humans, so far as is known.
More »

Don't miss Free Buddhist Audio! What a great service this site is. It won Favorite Site from Going for Refuge's year-end, or rather year-beginning awards. And here's a list of Buddhist holidays for 2008 from Ecumenical Buddhism.
More »

The Burmese government is involved in multiple fights with rebel groups in areas all around the country. This is where the child soldiers come in, forced into fighting by both sides. Burma leads the world in the number of child soldiers active within its borders. And then there's the opium.
The Burmese government claims to be fighting opium production in the Golden Triangle. According to rebel leader Col. Yawd Ser, who battles government troops in that area, the Burmese government gets money from the U.S. for that purpose, pockets it, then turns around and grows more opium.
More »

Who's to blame for the bomb blasts in Burma? And here's an unfortunate numerological connection between China and Burma.
Thai soldiers in the south of the country were hit in a deadly ambush that killed eight of their number. Thailand's prime minister Surayud Chulanont downplayed the importance of the attack, saying it was nothing out of the ordinary. (Civil War?
More »

Check out Accidental Dharma (and post an entry on it!) It's a collaborative blog created by Peter Clothier of The Buddha Diaries. What a great idea.
Ad while you're at it, stop by the newbuddhist.com discussion boards. It's a great place for newbies and grizzled veterans alike.
More »

The insurgency in Thailand's largely Muslim south is now four years old, and 2007 was the bloodiest yet. 792 people were killed last year. 2776 have been killed since the conflict began. The violence affects both Muslims and Buddhists:
On Monday, a Buddhist sweet vendor was taken to hospital in Yala after being shot three times in the torso by a gunman riding on a motorcycle, an attack typical of insurgents who have never identified themselves of made their aims public.
On Sunday, a 30-year-old Muslim teacher was shot dead while walking home from evening prayers, police said.
The Burmese junta has already repressed Buddhist monks.
More »

Buddhist Geeks speak with Jundo Cohen, abbot of the almost totally virtual Treeleaf Zendo. If you haven't dropped by the Treeleaf Zendo for their daily zazen retreat, you don't know what you're missing!
BURMA HEADLINES
Burma's Junta, Oblivious to International Pressure, Imposes Media Control
Independence Day: What is there to Celebrate in Burma?
And in Mumbai Sunday, a Buddhist monk apparently committed suicide to protest a development in the northeastern suburb of Deonar — or was he murdered because he stood in the developer's way? Some called the death suspicious and violence erupted among the Buddhist dalits in the city.
More »

Some old bits on His Holiness the Dalai Lama: The Newsweek / Washington Post blog On Faith discusses his visit to Washington this fall. And Dan Rather interviews the DL in the melodramatically titled "One Man vs. China".
Lama Surya Das talks about Burma on Beliefnet.
And another Happy New Year message, this one from James of the Buddhist Blog.
More »

It's the new year and many of us have the great state of Iowa on the brain today. But the Voice of America is reporting on Burma and the incredible poverty there that guarantees the tensions between the people and the "government" will not go away anytime soon. And Claude Arpi wonders whether 2007 was an annus horribilis or an annus mirabilis for the Dalai Lama, and for Tibet.
But is there even anything new to the new year? Ethan Nichtern says the new year is a perfect opportunity to assess our path.
More »

December 18, 2007
For immediate release
* Buddhist Delegation Finds Burma Cloaked in Fear *
For more information, contact:
Maia Duerr, Communications Director, Buddhist Peace Fellowship, maia@bpf.org, 510-333-3528
(See information for interview subjects at bottom of press release)
Buddhist Delegation Finds Burma Cloaked in Fear
December 18, 2007, San Francisco, CA — A delegation organized by the U.S.-based Buddhist Peace Fellowship (BPF) has returned from a eight-day visit with Burmese activists, monks, students, orphans, and citizens in Rangoon, Burma, and along the Thai-Burma border.
Members of the delegation, who posed as tourists to be able to enter the country, collected a wealth of first-hand evidence that the situation in Burma has become even worse since the September peace marches undertaken by Buddhist monks.
More »

In an effort to keep the news and its people farther apart than they already are, the Burmese junta has imposed massive fees on satellite television license renewals, according to the BBC:
Satellite channels were a key source of information for Burmese residents during September's crackdown on anti-government campaigners, in which at least 31 people died.
Soap operas and sporting events are also popular.
The cost of renewing the satellite dish rose from 6000 kyat (approximately $5.00) to 1 million kyat ($800). This is three times the average annual salary, obviously out of reach of all but a very few privileged elites.
Evolutionary Mind has a review of B.
More »

Burma leads the world in number of child soldiers. Kids are literally pulled off the street and "drafted":
While 15-year-old San Lin Aung stood waiting for a train home at Pyinmana railroad station, an army sergeant approached him and asked to see his ID.
The boy couldn't produce one, so the soldier sent him to an army recruitment unit in Mingalardon, on the outskirts of Rangoon. The officer in charge of the unit refused to enlist him, but another unit in Mandalay accepted him without question.
Two 14 year-olds, Kyaw Min Thu from South Dagon, and a youngster from North Okkalapa, were also forcibly recruited by the army in late April, according to reports.
There may be as many as 70,000 child soldiers (and the number is growing) in Burma, according to a 2002 Human Rights Watch report.
More »

Tom (of Blogmandu and Thoughts Chase Thoughts and other sites) has brought a great and powerful blog to our attention: One Foot in Front of the Other, which is the blog of a Zen practitioner named Michael whose illness has placed him the position of directly confronting the great matter of life and death. On December 14th he wrote:
I'm curled up on a bed in an ER exam room.
More »

Dear Friends,
We are writing to ask your support for two beloved friends of ours, Stephen and Ondrea Levine. They are currently facing significant difficulty. After a life-time of giving, they are now at a time to receive from those of us whose lives have been touched by their presence and teaching.
More »